


Something Wicked

by trinityofone



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Evil Carnivals, F/M, M/M, The Ancients were jerks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-22
Updated: 2005-11-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:29:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone/pseuds/trinityofone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faustian bargains were <i>so</i> passé.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Wicked

In the small hours of the morning, at the darkest part of the night, at the time his brain still insisted on thinking of as three a.m.: silence. The waves lapped at the city’s walls, and the few marines on duty padded softly through the corridors. Rodney slept.

Then, with a gentle suddenness: the city inhaled; silence. The city exhaled: music.

Rodney came out of sleep hard and fast. He sat for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the twisting calliope music that was echoing through the city’s sound system. He tilted his head: he could almost recognize the tune, it was right at the edge of his consciousness... He shook himself. The speakers could be pumping the symphony he’d composed in fifth grade; it still wouldn’t answer the important questions: _Why? How?_ and _How long until it tries to kill us?_

He scrambled out of bed, pulling on boots and clothes, his earpiece and very nearly his gun. (The military bred bad habits.) Making for the door, he keyed his com. “Elizabeth...” he started and got nothing back but a louder burst of calliope. He tossed the earpiece aside, hurrying out into the hall, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling of talking to someone on the radio when they were in the same room with you, of voice overlapping voice, until you couldn’t tell which was real.

The corridor was full of people, most still in their nightclothes, most just standing around and gaping in the vague direction of the ceiling. Rodney blinked at them for a second, then started pushing his way through. “Excuse me, some of us might actually want to discover the _cause_ of the problem instead of standing around looking fish-faced; no, go ahead just stand anywhere; excuse--get out of my damn way!” By the time he had pushed Sergeant Stackhouse out of his path and made it into the transporter, he was really beginning to regret the paragraph in his anonymous letter to the producers of _Independence Day_ about how unrealistic it was to show so many people calmly waiting to be slaughtered, because nobody was _that_ stupid. Except apparently, they were. He shrugged and tapped the indicator for the control room. The rest of his points had been perfectly valid, anyway; Area 51 did not look like that _at all_.

Walking out of the transporter, he nearly ran smack into Colonel Sheppard, who was standing on the steps, staring at something--an apparently invisible something--over his shoulder. He was fully dressed, however--not to mention fully armed--so Rodney was willing to grant him exemption from the idiot masses. “Colonel,” he said, tapping him on the shoulder, and Sheppard blinked and said, “Oh, good, Rodney.” They walked into the control room together.

Elizabeth was wearing a nightgown. Rodney closed his eyes and tried again: nope, still a nightgown. Major Lorne, meanwhile, had apparently decided to forego pants: he was dressed in his uniform jacket and a pair of boxer shorts, hairy calves descending into a pair of Adidas slides. He looked like a frat boy. Still, it was better than Colonel Caldwell: put the man in a flannel bathrobe, and he suddenly bore a frightening resemblance to Rodney’s grandpa.

“What, was the city attacked by clothes-stealing elves?” Rodney said. “Very professional, guys.”

“Music,” said Lorne, pointing a finger ceilingward.

“Oh, professional _and_ observant. Great.”

“Rodney, it is coming from here.”

He craned his neck around Caldwell, resisting the urge to say, “Pardon, Papaw,” and saw Zelenka leaning over a map of the city. Radek was fully clothed; his eyes were as bright as the others’ were glassy. He hadn’t combed his hair, but then, he hadn’t brought doughnuts to the meeting, either. “Where?” Rodney said, and Radek explained how he had tapped into the communications system and triangulated the signal. “Definitely it is coming from here,” he said, zooming in on one of many unexplored sections of the city.

“Good, good,” Rodney said. One of these days, he really needed to remember to tell Radek how much he appreciated him. He added it to his mental to-do list under “Save city from current crisis,” “Unified field theory--solve,” and “Invent chocolate powerbar that really tastes like chocolate.”

“Colonel,” Rodney said, but Sheppard was staring into space again. “ _Col_ \--” he started, but suddenly Sheppard blinked, shook his head. “Um, yeah,” he said. “We should probably check that out.”

“I’ll come with you,” Elizabeth said, displaying a surprising amount of authority for a woman wearing something so...diaphanous.

“That’s really not necessary,” Sheppard said, but Caldwell stepped forward with an elegant sweep of his bathrobe.

“Yes, we should accompany you,” he said.

“Music,” added Lorne.

Rodney rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Radek, are you--”

“I do not like this,” Zelenka said, though he was packing up his laptop and following. “It sounds...”

Rodney snapped his fingers. “I knew the tune was familiar! It’s--” But the answer skittered out of his brain before he could grab ahold of it.

Radek looked sympathetic. “I do not like this,” he repeated.

It was a fifteen minute walk from the closest working transporter. They walked silently. Rodney, for once, did not feel like talking, but he hated the eerie quiet. _They’re like sleepwalkers_ , he thought. A second later he heard Radek mutter: “ _Les somnambules_.”

And through it all the calliope continued: endless, cyclical, insidious.

The halls, which before had been packed with wide-eyed schmuck bait, were now disturbingly deserted. As they approached the last corner, they discovered why: everyone, the entire population of the city, had gathered in the corridor outside a certain open archway. They were clustered together like fans waiting outside an arena, except they weren’t talking. None of them were talking. It made Rodney want to scream and shout and flail his arms--more so than usual, even. Instead he just said, “Jesus.”

Radek whispered, “Quite the opposite, I think.”

Silently, the crowd parted to let them through. To let _Sheppard_ through: because of course as soon as Mr. Magic Gene passed through the archway, the whole place lit up like Christmas. The crowd let out a collective, “ _Ooh_.” Rodney had to bite his tongue to stop from joining them.

It was like a dream. A beautiful dream. Rodney felt his chest tighten as he fought back a burst of ridiculous nostalgia--nostalgia for a childhood he had never had, a childhood of wide open spaces and endless summer nights and whispering with your best friend in the dark. Nostalgia for the midway and the arcade, for the brilliant glowing Ferris wheel, arching up into the stars.

Beside him, Sheppard lowered his gun, his arms falling limply to his sides. “I love the Ancients so much right now,” he said.

“I really, really don’t,” Rodney replied. “There’s something--okay, _so many_ things that are so, so not right about this...”

But the dam had broken. The scientists and soldiers of Atlantis rushed past him, racing to be the first to pull back the plunger on a pinball machine, to taste the fine threads of cotton candy melting on the tongue, to step inside the waving walls of the circus tent and see the dancing bears and beautiful women. To catch a glimpse of the tantalizing terrors within the hall of freaks.

“Doctor Weir,” Zelenka was saying, “Elizabeth, wait!” But Elizabeth did not wait. She ran off down the path like Dorothy disappearing down the Yellow Brick Road. Radek swore, then switched to muttering something that sounded like a prayer.

“This is insane,” Rodney said. “This is so unbelievably insane.”

“What, you think the Ancients never needed a little downtime?” Sheppard said. Rodney was surprised that he was still there; that he was willing to wait, to stand and stare at the Ferris wheel with stars in his eyes.

Rodney swallowed. “I think carnivals shouldn’t appear in empty rooms overnight.”

“You wanted them to put up flyers first?” Sheppard was grinning, a ridiculous little-boy grin. “Besides, it didn’t appear, any more than the labs or the jumper bay ‘appeared.’ It was just waiting for us to find it.”

Rodney rubbed at his forehead. The music whirled through his ears, plucked at the muscles in his fingers and toes. “That really shouldn’t make sense,” he said. But Sheppard’s hand was on his arm, guiding him forward. He was supposed to follow Sheppard; that was his job. “Radek,” he said helplessly, and turned to see Zelenka hovering in the doorway, shaking his head. Refusing to enter or begging Rodney to turn back; either way, Rodney found the distance between them growing inexorably greater, and then John gave his arm another jerk, snapping Rodney’s eyes up to his face, and he lost Radek completely.

“Did I ever tell you about the town where I grew up?” John asked.

“No,” Rodney said, watching a holographic midway barker hand Kavanagh a stuffed bear, which he passed on to a giggling Simpson. “You never tell me anything.”

“I grew up in this little town,” John continued, as if Rodney hadn’t spoken. “And every year the carnival would come. I think we must have been the last stop on their tour, because it was always early fall by the time they arrived. School had already started and the leaves had started to turn, and they would come and set up in this big empty field across from the elementary school. And I remember, every year, sitting and watching the Ferris wheel go up while the teacher droned on and on, knowing that soon, in just a few more hours, I’d be able to go out there, to go _up_ there...”

John’s thumb swept innocently over Rodney’s bare wrist. Rodney started, shook himself. “Look, that’s great that you grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting, but the vibe I’m getting off this place is much more Norman Bates. I think we should--”

“Ooh, funnel cake!” said John, and jerked him toward a stand being operated by a smiling man in a straw hat. Rodney could see the back wall through the shimmering glow of his striped vest.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Rodney said, “but no, no funnel cake! This is undoubtedly a massive power drain, not to mention really creepy...there are probably clowns lurking somewhere...”

“Just one ride,” John said, looking toward the Ferris wheel like a flower toward the sun. “Just _one_ \--”

John was so very hard to say no to. Luckily, Rodney had had a lot of practice. “Colonel,” he said sharply, “everyone is wandering around like they’re _drugged_. We need to figure out why, not toke up and join them!” He looked into Sheppard’s faraway eyes. “Please, _help_ me--”

Sheppard jerked his hand away. “You’re no fun, Rodney,” he said. “I guess I’ll go play by myself.” He turned and raced off.

“Dammit-- _John!_ ” And Rodney raced off after him.

They were running down the corridor of freaks, a line of booths covered in gauzy curtains swaying in an invisible breeze. Identical holograms leaned out as they passed, tipping their hats, barking their wares. “See the most beautiful woman in the world,” called one. “Wait for her to wake from her thousand-year slumber!”

“Ogle the incredible contortionist!” called another. “Will he escape in time? Step up, find out!”

A third looked Rodney straight in the eye. “Hear the mermaid singing,” he promised. “Real, authentic mermaid song, what you’ve been waiting your whole life to hear!”

Rodney hurried on.

In front of the mirror maze, Sheppard skidded to a halt. “It’s just on the other side,” he said, to no one in particular. “Just--”

A dwarf stepped out from behind one of the reflective panels and pulled on Sheppard’s pants leg. Rodney recoiled; he supposed he was going to have to add teratophobia to his already lengthy list of fears. “Don’t go in there,” said the dwarf. Its voice was high and squeaky, and, like the omnipresent music, both familiar and unfamiliar. Sheppard shook it off like an irritating family pet.

“No, Colonel, listen to the creepy bald dwarf-man!” Rodney said, but Sheppard had already passed between the walls. His image bounced back in infinite numbers; Rodney reached out, and his hand met nothing but glass.

“He never listens to me,” said the dwarf. Rodney looked down at it--him; took in the terrified eyes within the oddly pinched features, the tiny clenched fists sticking out from beneath the rolled sleeves of the flannel...bathrobe...

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Rodney said, leaning against one mirrored wall before reeling back as if shocked. The image in the glass was not his own. It was...

He turned and ran. Back the way he had come, past the sweeping arms of the carnival barkers, all of whom seemed to reach out and clutch at his sleeves with ethereal fingers.

No, not ethereal. Not ethereal at all.

As he ran, he realized with horror that the once busy midway was now empty and deserted, the only motion the rustling of the curtains beckoning him toward the booths. He thought he glimpsed figures inside: shadowy freaks and wonders; familiar profiles, perverted. He ran on.

The archway came into view. Someone was kneeling in it, bent over a second form, one unnaturally still, as vulnerable as the bare feet sticking out from beneath the hem of her nightgown.

“Radek!” Rodney shouted, recognizing the supplicant. “Oh thank--oh _no_.”

Elizabeth was stretched out on the floor. Rodney’s eyes scanned over her, saw with relief that she was breathing. But she was _so still_ , her eyes pressed so firmly closed. One of her hands was curled against her breast; in it she held a brilliantly red apple, missing a single bite.

“She is asleep,” said Radek.

“Yeah,” said Rodney, stomach churning. He did not sign up for this shit, for children’s fairytales and night terrors. The Wraith were bad enough. “Have you tried kissing her yet?”

Radek looked up at him with dark eyes. “Where is the Colonel?” he said.

Then he said, “Rodney? Rodney?” as Rodney slid bonelessly to the floor. His head in his hands, “I left him,” Rodney said. “I _left_ him.”

Radek squeezed his shoulder. “But you came back, yes? You will help me fix this.”

It took him a beat too long, but Rodney nodded. “Yes, yes, of course.” He stood, brushing off his pants. “Or rather, _you’ll_ help _me_. Since our leader’s a glass coffin and six dwarves away from the magic kingdom, I believe _I_ am in charge.”

Radek rolled his eyes. Then he said, “Six?”

“Yeah, Caldwell apparently jumped at the chance to play Dopey.” Rodney pinched the bridge of his nose. “What the _hell_ is going on here?”

“Right,” said Radek, standing also. “We begin at the beginning. Music. Like...”

Rodney sighed, but he said it. “Like a siren’s song. It bewitches everyone, gets them to come down here.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “In their inappropriate nightwear.”

Radek nodded. “When Colonel Sheppard steps through archway, all the lights come on. What should be empty room is laid out like bacchanal. Mature residents of Atlantis rush in like twelve-year-old children.”

“Actually, that’s fairly typical,” Rodney said.

“Yes,” Radek said. “Only usually, we are doing the rushing. Why are we not affected?”

Rodney had felt pretty affected for a moment there, but he didn’t see the need to tell Radek that. “Because we have iron-clad wills?” he suggested hopefully.

“Because we are cantankerous Scrooges in whom inner child is shrunken and dead?” Radek countered.

They both shook their heads. “Because we’re smarter than they are,” they concluded. “Obviously,” added Rodney.

“So,” Radek continued. “Is this some sort of Ancient trial? Test the fortitude of alien visitors?”

“With a _carnival_?”

He shrugged. “Temptation is temptation.”

“Yeah, but _why_? And why _now_? It’s been almost two years, and really, this was not the anniversary party I was hoping for.”

Another shrug. “I do not care,” Radek said. “I just want to know how to stop it.” He was looking down at the floor, at what rested there, pale and silent. “The Ancients, they impress me less and less, the longer we are here,” he said.

Rodney wanted to argue that they hadn’t proved _anything_ , that they had no way of knowing whether or not this place had been built by the Ancients, or what they had intended it for if it had. But he saw Sheppard’s dark head disappearing into the maze, the illusion of dozens when in fact there were none; and he said, “Yeah.”

Then he said, “Wait.”

Radek didn’t say, “What?” Radek didn’t say _anything_ , because Rodney had begun to pace and wave his hands, and Radek knew that meant he had had an idea. And when Rodney had an idea, 93.4751% of the time, it was a brilliant one.

“It’s not real,” Rodney said.

And now Radek did say, “What? It is not VR.”

“No, listen,” said Rodney. “I know this galaxy produces more than its fair share of impossible stuff, but magic carnivals? Holographic funnel cake salesmen? Simpson and Kavanagh getting along? No. That’s far too much to swallow far, far too many hours before breakfast. It’s all in our heads.”

Radek began to nod. “Of course! The room must somehow be scanning our brainwaves, then projecting... How else could Ancients know about funnel cakes and Ferris wheels?”

“Exact--oh no.” Rodney slumped back against the wall. “It’s not reading _our_ brainwaves, it’s reading _Sheppard’s_. This is all some twisted childhood fantasy of his.”

Radek’s smile was just barely amused. “So it’s true. Is Colonel Sheppard’s world; we just live in it.”

“Please,” said Rodney. “In his wildest dreams.”

Radek gestured toward the menacing landscape on the other side of the archway, its lights still flickering at them, winking; he gestured at Elizabeth, lost in her thousand-year slumber. “We are all trapped in his dream,” he said. “How do we wake up?”

Rodney sighed. “Well, obviously carrying people out of the room doesn’t work.” He felt his lip twist. “You sure you don’t want to try kissing her?”

Radek glared. “I don’t see you--”

“I have to go get him,” Rodney said suddenly. “I have to go back in, and bring him out.”

Something in him unclenched as he uttered the worlds. It was a feeling he knew well: the relief of recognizing what had to be done, even if it scared him to do it. And he _was_ terrified, but this was the kind of fear, perhaps the only kind of fear, under which he could function. Under which he could thrive.

“I have to bring him out,” Rodney said again. He levelled his shoulders, stood up straight. “Right.”

Radek hesitated. He looked at Elizabeth. Then, “I will come with you,” he said. “You may need--”

“I need you to stay here,” Rodney said, certain now. “Try to hack into the system from the outside. If I don’t--there’s got to be some sort of external shutdown, a failsafe, _something_.”

“But if it is interfacing with the Colonel’s brain,” Radek said. “If it is interfacing with _all_ our brains...”

Rodney gulped. “Last resort,” he managed to say, a little hoarse. He pasted on one of his better contemptuous smirks. “You don’t want to be responsible for destroying one of the greatest minds in human history, do you?”

Radek rolled his eyes, but he immediately knelt and booted up his laptop. Rodney mentally reduced the priority of chocolate powerbars on his to-do list.

He paused in the doorway, taking a deep breath. “Iron-clad will,” he reminded himself. “Or Scrooge; whatever.”

“Good luck, Orpheus,” Radek whispered.

Rodney sighed and Rodney frowned, but his tone was gentle--for him, for anybody. “You too, Prince Charming,” he said, and stepped through.

* * *

It was entirely anticlimactic. Of course it was: the dream--hallucination, whatever--was the same on either side of the doorway. He knew that. Still, he was being brave: he felt like he deserved at least a cursory special effect.

He walked forward. The carnival was even more creepy now that it was deserted, and creepier still when he realized that it _couldn’t_ be deserted, that all his people were here somewhere, hidden behind the flapping curtains, spirited away. He tried not to look, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from straying. He remembered the barker boasting about the incredible contortionist and thought he saw Ronon, wrapped in chains and wires; he recalled the promise of mermaids and caught a glimpse of Teyla beating her tail against the glass. There was a glimmer of Heightmeyer, blind and dressed in fortune-teller’s garb; Lorne, perched on a platform, a tiny Tom Thumb; Beckett and Cadman, finally united in a fusion of arms and legs. Rodney clenched his fists and tried not to see any of it, tried to see nothing until there was only his own reflection staring back. And the mirror maze swallowed him.

He reached out a hand and touched the smooth glass wall. A hand reached out from the other side of the mirror and touched back. Or so it looked, or so it seemed. None of it was real. He breathed deeply: _One step at a time. At every corner, turn right. You’ll find your way out eventually_.

Rodney had never been especially fond of mirrors; his vanity was of another type. Although there were times--minutes, moments--when he had stopped and stared a little longer than was strictly necessary, when he had looked into the reflection of his own pupils and thought: _chin a little stronger hair a little thicker mouth a little less crooked arms legs chest more muscular not so weak not so weak not so_ \--

He saw it now, how it could be. Coming toward him from every angle, rushing forward to embrace him, and all he had to do was step into its arms, assent. He closed his eyes, drew back his fingers. _You’ll have to try harder than that_ , he thought; _said_ , “You’ll have to try harder! You’re coming at me all wrong! Do you think I’m _stupid_?” But he felt stupid, or like he could all too easily _be_ stupid, be that smiling face in the mirror. He walked faster, ran, his hands pushing off the glass, propelling him forward, shoving the army of images away.

He spilled out of the maze, and fell on his knees in front of the Ferris wheel.

His neck hurt looking up at it. Towering and dark, scraping the night sky (and how was there _sky_? They were indoors, this _wasn’t real_ ). It turned, slowly, perfectly in time with the music he could once again hear drifting across the field, that same lilting calliope tune. He could almost...but it spun away again, like the wheel, cycling backwards...

_Backwards_. The music was being played backwards. He shifted the notes around in his brain, yes, yes, forming a pattern that was recognizable, that was...Chopin.

Chopin’s Funeral March.

“Oh, ha ha,” Rodney said, grimacing, forcing himself to his feet. He’d deal with the lamentable irony later; right now, he needed to find Sheppard. He scanned the revolving seats of the Ferris wheel again: they were all empty. Then he saw, silhouetted against the blackening (impossible) sky: a long, low concrete building. It looked like a prison, which Rodney knew meant it was most likely an elementary school. A single window burned with a blaze of yellow light.

Rodney walked toward it.

Through the double doors. His nostrils were immediately assaulted with the scent of paste; the linoleum squeaked beneath his boots. He walked past classrooms cloudy with chalk dust, walls hung with outdated maps of the world, tiny trash cans that stank of discarded bologna sandwiches and spoiled milk. He realized that he was making a face, his lip curling up in the dark. He had seen how the carnival could twist its patrons’ desires, but _something_ about this must have appealed to Sheppard. Rodney couldn’t imagine anything less alluring.

He turned a corner, stumbling into the swath of light cutting across the corridor. The door opposite was propped open a few centimeters, and from inside Rodney could hear a quiet _scrape scrape_. He knew that sound; he remembered it. Remembered an era before dry-erase pens, he thought with a surprised half-smile. The sound of chalk on a board.

He reached out his hand, and then he was widening the band of yellow light, pulling open the door, stepping inside. The gentle scratch of chalk stopped. Rodney stared; the boy at the board stared back. He was young, less than ten years old, and cute in the way that children who weren’t talking or touching anything they weren’t supposed to could, on occasion, be cute. His dark hair spilled over his forehead, into eyes that, despite everything, in spite of _all this_ , were still too old for his face.

Rodney said, “John?”

The boy nodded. “I’ll be done soon,” he said. “I just have to finish, and then I can go.”

Rodney looked at the chalkboard. FIND ALL POSSIBLE INTEGER SOLUTIONS was written at the top. Then the equation:

7x-17y = 1

And in a different hand (John’s hand):

x = (17y+1)/7 = 2y + (3y+1)/7  
 _if_ (3y+1)/7 = z, _then_ 3y+1 = 7z _and_ x = 2y+z  
3y-7z = -1  
y = (7z-1)/3 = 2z + (z-1)/3  
 _if_ (z-1)/3 = t, _then_ z = 3t+1  
 _and_ y = 2z+t = 7t+2  
 _and_ x = 2y+z = 2(7t+2)+3t+1 = 17t+5

Then finally:

x = 5, y = 2  
x = 22, y = 9  
x = -12, y = -5  
x = 39, y = 16

the solutions tracking all the way across the board, growing smaller and smaller as John worked to squeeze them in. Rodney’s stomach gave another half-hearted flop. “That’s a linear Diophantine equation,” he said. “There are an infinite number of integer solutions.”

“Well, that’s irony for you,” said a voice.

Rodney spun around.

“That’s right, come on in, Rodney,” said Rodney. He was--the thing with his face was--sitting at the back of the classroom, its feet propped casually on the big teacher’s desk. It smiled at him, white teeth and thin lips. “We’re all here to learn, aren’t we?”

“I’m mostly self-taught,” Rodney said, then winced as the other him’s smile grew even broader.

“Exactly,” it said.

Rodney backed up--backed toward John. “Come on,” he said. “We’re done with ironic math. Let’s go, come on.”

John shook his head. “I’ll be done soon,” he repeated. “I just have to finish, and then I can go.”

“Aww, isn’t it cute how he always sets impossible tasks for himself?” said the thing at the back of the room. “Run fastest, fly highest. Save _everybody_. It’s adorable.”

“Shut up,” Rodney snapped. “John,” he said, “we’re leaving. Don’t make me pick you up.”

“You shouldn’t let him touch you,” the thing advised Rodney. “Show him your hands, John. Show him _why_.”

John lifted his hands, palms up. They were covered in red, crusty dirt and grime and-- “It’s only chalk dust,” John said. “It washes right off.”

The thing laughed.

“ _Enough_ ,” said Rodney. He reached for John’s stained fingertips and found himself clutching his own forearm instead. “Not so fast,” his own voice hissed. “Sit down.” He pushed himself into a chair and stood over himself, contempt in his eyes.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“The only person you’ll ever trust, ever care about, ever love,” he said. “ _You_.”

Rodney shook his head. “You’re lying.”

Another smile. “Only to myself. Now.” He leaned over the desk, got in his face. “What do you want?”

Two could play this game. “You tell me.”

“All right,” said the other brightly. He reached behind his back and pulled out an intricately bound book. He dropped it down on the desk in front himself. “I want knowledge.”

Rodney unconsciously moistened his lips. “Knowledge?” he said.

“Yes,” he answered. “I’ll give you a little preview, shall I?” He pulled back the thick leather cover, flipping pages. “There.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The meaning of life........................................1  
The answer to the ultimate question................42  
The question to the ultimate answer................43  
Everything, ever..........................................92  
Misc. ..........................................................∞

“Is this a joke?” Rodney asked himself.

“You know it’s not,” he answered.

Rodney’s fingers quivered on the page. He swallowed. Then he said, “In this book. Does it describe, in detail, where you can _shove_ it?”

He glanced up in time to see the anger flash across the imitation of his face. Rodney smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “But Faustian bargains are just so _passé_.”

He sank back in the chair, arms crossed over his chest, gloating. “John and I would like to leave now,” he said. “If you’re sick of being the ghost in this machine, why don’t you go haunt an old barn or something?”

The mirror of his mouth curled unnaturally wide. “Not that simple,” said a voice that was sounding less and less like his own. “Not that simple for _John and I_.” There was a shimmer in the air. “But it could be.”

“But it could be,” said John, the adult John, the John who was kneeling suddenly before him, running a hand up his thigh. Rodney started back, clutching the flimsy wooden desk. “Not real,” he said.

“It could be,” John said again, smiling that lovely seductive smile. That smile that was full of promises, of promise. “How ‘bout we make a trade? _You_ ,” he squeezed Rodney’s thigh, “for _him_.”

Adult John inclined his head toward the front of the room, where boy John was standing, frozen, clutching his piece of chalk. His mouth was open, his eyes wide. “Him,” Rodney said. “You mean you’d let him go?”

“Yes,” it told him in John’s voice. “If that’s what you want, then yes.”

And from the front of the room, John’s eyes, old eyes in a young face, screamed, _No! No, no, no!_

Rodney looked at him. Silently, he tried to say, _It’s all right. If you can get out, it’ll be all right. Well, in_ theory _, anyway..._

The older John pushed in closer. “Do we have a deal?” he whispered.

Rodney opened his mouth, the word _Yes_ forming on his tongue. He’d gotten to “Y--” when a piece of chalk hit right between the eyes.

“Hey!” he said. “What the hell is the matter with you? I had it under control!” He rubbed dust off his forehead. “Also, ow!”

The boy John--the _real_ John--gestured at him, furiously. No doubt he was telling Rodney that he, Rodney, was a fool; that he, John, wasn’t worth it; and that he, Rodney, should get out of there while he still had the chance. “Oh, shut up,” Rodney said. “What do you know? You’re _nine_.”

“Do we have a deal?” the other John said, voice less silky now, more impatient.

“Ye--” Rodney started.

John’s arm crashed into a chair, rocketing it across the room. He stomped his feet. He pounded his fists against his legs, sending clouds of red dust into the air. “Yeah, can’t hear you,” Rodney said. He turned back to the other, who seemed to have developed a bit of a twitch. “Now, about that bargain...”

John picked up a desk, short arms straining, and with a silent scream threw it at the window, at the image of a Ferris wheel spinning in the dark, turning over, and over, and over.

The glass shattered.

The glass shattered, and sound poured in: howling wind and panicked calliope music and John’s voice, slamming back into his throat. He turned on the thing with his face, flush with fury. “You were banished!” he said, over the noise of the wind, of wind whistling through twisted pipes. “But apparently it didn’t take, so allow me the pleasure of banishing you again!” He pulled the thing off of Rodney, shaking it between fists reduced in size if not in strength. It writhed in his grasp, stretching, curling in on itself, collapsing into glowing tendrils of light and air. “Get the hell out of my city!” he screamed, and the wind and the world tore themselves apart.

“Oh, crap,” Rodney said. The blackboard was peeling itself off the wall; the walls themselves dismantling brick by brick. John stood in the middle of it all, shell-shocked. Rodney grabbed his hand, pulled him through the thinning rows of desks, toward the back of the room. “Get down!” he shouted, pushing John under the teacher’s desk. He crawled in after him, hunching his shoulders against the wind, sheltering John’s ridiculously small body with his own proper-sized one. “And it’s _our_ city, dammit!”

Then the roof pulled away, and there was nothing but noise.

* * *

Out of the noise came silence. It was a comfortable kind of silence, one of relief, of the welcome sound of both of them drawing breath, of them breathing in tandem. But silences, even the comfortable ones, eventually served to make Rodney _un_ comfortable. Also... He shifted. “I’m getting a cramp.”

John’s head was pressed against his chest. John’s shoulders were once again broad under his hands. John’s laugher vibrated through his entire body. “Okay,” he said. “I think it’s safe to get up.”

“Okay,” Rodney said.

“Rodney.” Warm laugher, warm breath. “That means you have to let go.”

“Oh. Oh!”

He dropped his hands, opened his eyes, stood. John stood with him, stretching his long body, becoming reacquainted. John looked...well, he looked like himself. Beautiful.

Rodney shook his head, shook himself, and the thought vanished with the last of the wind.

He looked around. They were standing in the middle of a vast, high-ceilinged room. They were not alone: all around them lay their fellow Atlanteans, their friends and co-workers, stretched out on the ground like they were holding a city-wide slumber party. As Rodney watched, they began to stir, to wake, some childishly rubbing their eyes, clutching for covers that weren’t there, yawning. Rodney glanced around, felt a fresh squeeze of relief when he saw Caldwell, saw Lorne; saw Teyla, Ronon, Heightmeyer; Beckett and Cadman; Simpson and Kavanagh. All of them, their glorious, flawed selves: restored. He realized he was smiling like an idiot; realized he didn’t care. Then he caught sight of Zelenka and Elizabeth. Radek’s cheeks were flushed and he was grinning at Rodney, gesturing. Rodney cast one last glance back at John--at Sheppard; then he raced forward, accidentally stepping on a marine’s fingers, muttering “Sorry, sorry,” and grinning in the face of her glare.

Radek met Rodney halfway. “I did it!” they both shouted.

Then they said, “What? _I_ did it!”

“Wait,” said Radek.

“Ex _cuse_ me?” said Rodney.

“But I took your advice,” said Radek. “I kissed Elizabeth, and demonic carnival went poof!”

Rodney shook his head. “No, it was me! _I_ faced down an evil Ancient with a Mephistopheles complex! _I_ resisted grave temptation and _I_ saved Colonel Sheppard and survived what could very easily be classified as a small hurricane! _Me!_ ”

“Oh,” said Radek. “Well, also I kissed Elizabeth!”

“Good for you!” Rodney said, realizing with a start that he meant it. “Now go tell your girlfriend I want the day off!”

Elizabeth gave _everyone_ the day off. Rodney stumbled back to his quarters, sprung the catch on his secret panel, and rapidly ate four of his special stash of chocolate bars. He deserved to indulge himself, he thought, lying back on the bed. A man could only take so much self-denial.

But before he could take matters in hand, so to speak, there was a knock at the door. He leapt to his feet, wiping the smudged chocolate off his mouth and onto the back of his hand. “Just a minute!” he called; thinking, _Pants, pants..._

The door slid open and Sheppard waltzed in. “‘Just a minute’ does not mean _now_ ,” Rodney snapped, as Sheppard got a full view of him in his “Black Holes Suck” boxer shorts.

“Sorry,” Sheppard said. “I was kind of stuck in a supernatural wind tunnel earlier; my hearing’s a little off.”

He started to leave. “No, wait!” Rodney said. Sheppard turned. “Don’t be stupid. It wasn’t supernatural.”

Sheppard arched an eyebrow. “What _was_ it?”

Rodney lifted his chin. “A renegade Ancient, right?”

“Sure,” Sheppard said, just as Rodney heard himself say, “It didn’t mean anything, you know!”

A slight crease in Sheppard’s brow. “What?”

“Back in the...the classroom. It was, you know, throwing everything it could at me, temptations left and right.” He mimed temptations flying at him through the air. “It didn’t mean anything.”

Sheppard nodded, slowly. “I know,” he said. “Anyway. I just wanted to say thank you.”

Rodney shrugged. Casual; he was all casual. “No problem.”

The corner of Sheppard’s mouth turned up. “My turn next, okay?” Then the door slid shut, and he was gone.

Rodney expelled a deep breath. It was fine; it was all fine. It was just like it was supposed to be.

The door opened again with a woosh. “You know the best part of being young?” Sheppard said. “You’re not afraid to take risks.”

And Rodney knew in the second before it actually happened what was _going_ to happen; knew what John’s hand would feel like on the back of his neck; knew the warmth of his mouth, and the taste of him; knew the intensity and _rightness_ of the kiss, because it was everything that he had been offered, everything that he had rejected, rejected then so that he could have it now, for real.

“Do you know,” he said, drawing back, breathless, “what the best part of being grown up is?”

“No,” laughed John, warm and honest against his mouth. “But I can’t _wait_ for you to show me.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Heavy debt owed, of course, to Ray Bradbury’s _Something Wicked This Way Comes_. Also, one line lifted directly from _Buffy_. Because if I’m not ripping off Joss Whedon, what’s the point?
> 
> 2\. Math from [here](http://www.ltn.lv/~podnieks/gt4.html). If it’s wrong...well, that’s ‘cause I’m dumb.


End file.
